


Stages of

by vhis



Category: Black Dagger Brotherhood - J. R. Ward
Genre: 5000 words max, Angst, Character Study, Drama, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Grief, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Cheating, Light BDSM, M/M, Missing Scene, More tags to be added, Not A Fix-It, One sided, Pining, Relationship Study, Sexual Content, Sexual Tension, Suicide Attempt, This Was Supposed To Be A One Shot, Unresolved Sexual Tension, V pov, hinted ptsd, not a HEA, oh man
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-19
Updated: 2016-10-26
Packaged: 2018-08-09 18:33:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 9
Words: 14,114
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7812637
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vhis/pseuds/vhis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Also called - how V pases the time by psychoanalyzing his relationship with Butch.<br/>Also called-fill in the gaps, scene interpretation, wishfull thinking...thing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The trigger

He started the rationalization of this looking in the mirror, the same night he sent the female to his...he didn’t know what Butch was to him. Yet. After the cop just narrowly escaped death at the hand of the Omega. After he thought that he himself has –almost- died. From fear, from grief, from need.  

Everything has to have an answer, a solution and just like that, ignoring the hellfire inside at the thought of the cops’ vulnerability and life spam, ignoring the wetness on his forehead and his eyes, he started down the road to self diagnosis.

Anything to keep away the questions. He can do this. He can rationalize love, lust, misunderstanding, whatever this is. This only thing he can’t understand about himself: his cop.

It started as a way to find out what the human is to him and once found, he can bend, counter or subdue the chemicals involved.

The analysis went on for almost three years. In the moments when he felt that need, that tricky space of nothingness, he thought of this and added data to the analysis. Everything to understand this part of him. It’s like a hobby now. Some smoke, some suck on tootsie rools, some watch TV. He writes, inside his mind, a theory.

Yesterday, his mother …died, left, whatever. He felt rootles. And the first thing he craved for was to go get Butch and have his best friend stretch him out on a rack and whip him until the blood spilled cleaned out the mess inside of his head. And it fucking terrified him, the way he went back to the cop and saw him as home.

So he dematerialized to the Commodore and waited out the night. And his sister. They were going to talk and then give the news to the Brotherhood. Until then, he had time to forget and do something clinical.

Three years and that thought came back to him every time. When in need, in pain, and sometimes when in ecstasy, he thought of Butch. Tonight, he’s going to find the why of it. End his thesis. Because he feels like he has nothing left. Some clean their drawers when in this state. Some their wardrobe or their offices.

Not Vishous.

What he does is called the end.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I was thinking about this for a long time now, and I finally feel like it has to be writen, in the light of the Beast and the new book coming out. I always felt like V would try to understand and rationalize his relationship with Butch. And even if I have still limted knowledge in psychology, reading this relationship felt like going over all this stages. So take this as a fic, not as a case study, read on and tell me what you think. Hopefully it will be entertaining to look inside V's head.  
> Real study sources:  
> https://www.gottman.com/blog/the-3-phases-of-love/  
> http://www.youramazingbrain.org/lovesex/sciencelove.htm  
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limerence#Bond_varieties


	2. LOVE

2.1 Stage one:lust

He wanted to kill him when he first saw him, but hell, that’s not scale to base a hypothesis on, because he wanted to kill –almost- everything. Even his brother Rhage, there, in the beginning, when the vampire gave him that shit eating grin, all-knowing and annoying. All he said, intoxicated by something he –almost- never drank, was that he’s going to sleep with the cop. As in crash fucked faced drunk next to the guy. Which is what he did. But thinking about it clinically, he remembers the signs.

After three hundred years in hiding, sleeping with an eye open was a given. But not then, in that first night. That night, he closed them both and even his third, that strange power of perception. He closed himself to Butch and decided to stay out of his mind right after he invaded his thoughts and felt the determination to hold his own against a house of vampire warriors. Insanity. Death wish. Nothingness.

And then, just as he was looking into his deep hazel eyes, up close, invading his space, V felt it, before he saw it: the resemblance to his own personal hell. And the need to put the human to sleep was replaced by something else.

Something that made him want to touch his lips to the bottle he touched, to want to carry the drunk bastard back to a room and keep him there, safe, no matter what the King decided to do with him. And it made him watch over the cop as he crashed and fell immediately asleep, like a baby. Like V was his protector, not the killer vampire that could end him in a heartbeat. And when the cop woke up, he woke up and it freaked him, the trust, the strategic error in relaxing near that human.

And it went even further. The moment the cop woke him, a hand on his shoulder, he came out of the dream and stared at him, breathless, warm hand caught in a death grip.

“Relax, V. It’s me.”

Like that would clarify anything, like it would make V release the bones and muscles, like it made any sense, in either worlds, human and vampire, that he was glad to be awake and here, with that male.

He felt that hand, perilously real and …safe. And he felt that yes, he can –almost- see it, how he’ll give himself to this human, be his, trust his life in his mortal hands and reveal himself, to that end he just dreamed of. Of him naked and Butch wrapped around him, the two of them high up in the sky, entwined in the midst of a cold wind.

It was lust. It was limerence. It was obsession. It was the response of a bonded male. He saw it in others when thei were blind or refused to see. He studied it, so he can hide and fake and even deny himself, if needed be. But his body couldn’t.

The moment he saw Butch coming out of the shower, disheveled and clean and a little embarrassed, avoiding his eyes, V knew this was his mate. The cop just didn’t know it yet. So he smiled a little, daring the human to say something, and when he didn’t, he started to undress. Slowly, watching him and enjoying that filthy mouth opened on the verge of saying something but not quite, eyes big and wondering, brows lowered in question, the fight of thoughts on that face. God, how he liked to play. To feel that knot inside his stomach and lower, that anticipation, the need to see just how far can he go to make the cop react.

That insanely hot redness crept its way into Butch’s face and no matter how much he busied himself with looking for his shirt and talking bullshit like how this tops the “weird places I woke up in” top. V felt him, he saw him. For the first time in his life, he saw someone.  

But of course he didn’t go all the way. Yeah, the human couldn’t read the ancient language, but sure as hell he could feel disgust and his scared genitalia could be a deal breaker at this point. As he wanted to leave and finish undressing himself in the bathroom, the cop cleared his throat to get his attention. He had it.

“So…V…”

“Yeah, cop,” he listened without turning and displaying the massive hard on he was currently trying to get into the shower and find release from.

“That woman…last night…Do you think she’ll come by again, like, you know, before you …decide?”

And just like that, V knew three things:

He didn’t have his glove on- and that is why he completely melted his belt buckle.

He could still feel- because the temperature in the room plummeted and he was suddenly cold, undressed as he was, exposed and –almost- afraid.

And he now knew how he’ll die, because what he dreamed of him and the cop was his death, not his mating.

So he went into the bathroom, without answering Butch and stood there, under the cold spray, head in his hands, the thing between his legs soft and weeping, his hands and feet trembling, wondering just what the fuck was he doing in hoping.

Using 300 years of experience, he raised a wall, of ice and black metal, he looked himself in the mirror and repeated the words:

think, don’t feel, think, don’t feel, think, don’t feel

Until they sounded real and reasonable and very much like a solution and an explanation.

It was lust. It was limerence. It was obsession. It was the response of a sexual being with perverted ways and tasted, finding his pyrocant, deprived of closeness and saturated in need of …something.

He felt something he could hide and fake and even deny himself. Think, don’t feel. And his body would learn. He’ll fucking bend it into submission. Because he’s Vishous. And lust, he can drown, he can gag, he can dom.

“Tonight at 10. Wear a white, buttoned up shirt and jeans. Be barefoot. What do you say to me?”

“Yes, my lheage,” the male voice offered, deep and willing and completely wrong.

It was lust, just lust.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What do you think? I wanted to keep it as canon as possible and I really see this could be true, this beginning. Looking forward to your comments. We'll see where this fic goes next. Thank you.


	3. LOVE

2.2 Stage two: attraction

He made a list, because he had a love/hate relationship with lists, and it felt like being hit with his whip when another item on said list was being crossed out.

  * Gifting loving behaviors, includes all object gifts, experiential gifts and favors done for the purpose of conveying love. Check.



Because when Butch left the Pit that day to confront lessers, V felt powerless, for the first time in his life. And he wanted the cop to have something of him, so the Beretta had to do, a practical as well as an emotional gift. Hell, he would have forged him a set of daggers if there was time. Letting the human cop get out the door was also the hardest thing he had to do. A night of firsts. And the words he uttered then, in the ancient language, so the cop would still maintain the illusion that V was only his temporary roommate, were:

_You fade and I will follow_

And as he told the King and the Brotherhood he dreamed of him, he made sure of exactly that. Yeah, he knew he was fueling his psychosis, but next to the long stretch of nothing, this was something.

 

  * Expressional loving behaviors, includes loving facial expressions, tonal expressions, gestural expressions, and postural expressions all conveying love. Check.



He was constantly pushing the limits with Butch. Not that he knew them in more than theory, but he studied his brothers. And walking around –almost- naked was not a common practice except for the inductions. Also, coming into the guy’s room and getting his clothes to wear, just to feel his scent, was …ok, kind of creepy.

Almost as creepy as the way he changed. Looking at himself in the mirror, he saw that gaping hole in his defenses and it drove him insane. Because his cop needed him as a friend, not…

Fuck, but everything in him wanted to scream at the male to open his eyes and look at him. Yeah, like renouncing ones’ religion, convictions, sexual orientation and set of standards was as easy as that. Dream on. But no, not even that, he didn’t dream. Nothing.

So when Rhage asked who the female Butch was pining after was and found it was Marissa, he assumed V knew the future of that relationship. Except that… he didn’t. Nothing more about the cop followed. Except that dream/premonition/torture, recurring and crystal clear, of him naked and the cop near, so near.

Tactile loving behaviors, all forms of loving affectionate touch including holding, hugging, stroking, caressing, cuddling, again and sexual touch when done with love. -Almost –Check.

V didn’t touch. He bruised. In sex or on the streets, his contact with others was to maim or hurt. If that hurt caused some damage and others pleasure, it was just a matter of result.

With the cop, every moment near was another opportunity. It wasn’t only pure and repressed lust. It was need to protect. When Butch wanted to go out for Bella, his heart almost stopped from all that pride and fear doing a number on him.

He touched Butch with care, his moves rehearsed and playing the same role of friend, safe, detached. Every day was a study in self control.      

 

  * Verbal loving behaviors, includes all spoken and written words meant to convey love. Check. Well-



Vishous never said I love you. Probably, given the choice, he would show, rather than say it. But he did the next best thing. He trusted his cop. Talked to him and no other. Well, he told Phury about the visions, but only because he was horny as hell and needed a distraction. But he told Butch. After a few days and no “call from the other side”, as he sometimes called the visions, he started to pace the Pit and throw fits. Even tried to stop Butch from going out on a night.

Things got heated pretty fast after that. Because you can’t alpha an alpha and be making a fit in front of the door of the Pit, forbidding, yeah, he used that words, the hot headed Irish to leave and get away with it.  It was bound to leave him with a black eye. Not that he minded.

In the end, the cop looked at him funny, head cocked to the side and asked, in a perfectly fucking civil voice:

“What’s wrong?”

And he couldn’t say. Because he was blind. All he knew was that when he had his powers he believed, with all his being, that if something was to happen to the cop, he would know. He would be warned. And now he knew nothing. And he couldn’t take the chance.

 A bottle of Goose later and he found himself with his head on Butchs’ pillow, inhaling his scent. But alone. He wanted to believe that he told the male all that it was eating him inside and then Butch ended up fucking him, burying him in his sheets, because yes, he would do with a pity fuck.

But the truth was, as he later found out from an embarrassed cop, that he carried him to the closest room as he told him about the visions, and tucked him in, so that if any Brother came, to not find him shit faced drunk and ask what’s wrong. Always the perceptive fucker, his cop.

Always and about everything, except for what was just in front of him. The pathetic vampire who slept soundly only when Butch was around, who inhaled his scent with more greed than his smokes and who, in the desperation to protect him, spent nights and days and nights again until he pulled of the miracle and got back his visions. Just for him, for that human ex cop.   

Fuck, it wasn’t lust. It was attraction.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The trigger for finally writing this fic was the song and video for Scars-Boy Epic. And the fact that I think Butch was cruel to V for most of the time. :( Looking forward to your opinions.


	4. LOVE

2.3. Attachment

Of course he tried to escape it. It was a liability. To care so much, to care in any degree over lust. Like the way he finished the cops’ sentences, like that night when he, without thinking, just reached, still talking to the King and the brothers and cleaned the blood from the cops face with his gloved hand, and got _that_ look from Z. Like the way he changed the way he spoke, the way he moved, the way he fucked even.

And to think he actually thought about introducing his blood stream to some drugs in order to counteract the effects of bonding. If anyone could, it should be him. A little oxytocin, serotonin, some hormones here and there…But after his body betrayed him, his mind did too.

The first vision he had, after the dry period, was of him kneeling, scratching the skin off his head with his bare hands and banging fists on the cold, icy ground, screaming “I can’t find him, I can’t find him”.

And then, just as the screams were too much, a ghost appeared, one that looked like his cop, but so much paler, grey and lifeless. And as he stood there, cold to the bones, trembling in fear, he knew what he needed to do. So he caught the specter, brought its head down and to his neck and pleaded.

_Drink, take from me_

**Affirmation loving behaviors** involves all behaviors which work to express to the loved that they are highly valued, of considerable importance, of much worth and are extraordinarily special.  Because yes, nothing says attachment better than a glass of your own blood. Forget the box of candies, the flowers  and the dinner and movie.

And he thought about ambushing the cop as soon as he came home. For the span of 9 minutes, before the door to the Pit opened, he was tortured by insecurities and different scenarios. From irrational ones, like asking Butch to drink from him and the cop saying yes, to crowding him against a wall, kiss his eyes and beg him to see him, see Vishous. Tell him to forget that female, forget his old life- or not, his choice-, but to choose him instead.

_Choose me_

For V, he was perfect, no mask needed, no improvement. Well, almost perfect. And as he slashed his wrist and filled a glass, in the emptiness of his room, he smiled. Making the cop drink this “wine”, something he never did, didn’t have a taste for, no inclination or desire, would somehow be as if convincing the straight Irish, hell fearing catholic to accept a future when, someday, he’ll want V inside him. Well…nobody is perfect.

But the cop drank and he liked it, initially. V could see as resistance became acceptance and pleasure and he almost came in his leathers, right there, watching a human male take a part of him inside, and becoming-almost-as his. And then, through the spasms and orgasm, the fever and delirium, he was right there, holding Butch and telling him, in all the words that he read, but never felt like he could utter, except now, that

_I will never desert you, no matter your choices, decisions and needs, I will be there for you, as long as my heart has a beat, this, I swear_

Somewhere in the middle of that struggle to keep Butch close, he forgot to rationalize this. And his body took over. It lasted just a second, just until his bonding scent traveled the distance from his skin to his nose and the information was processed by his brain and he could stop it.

He’d been terrified. He felt like trying to stop a vision, or his own blood. He felt like he dirtied the cop, disrespected him. The animal need to mark someone as yours, that was insane. Butch should be able to choose and make the decision without the incentive or the deception of a bonding scent who warned the others to stay away. So he stopped it.

It was hard. It was sad. The maddening rhythm of the chest he was embracing, the smell of sex, the panting, the mix of his scent with something else, something different, something barely there and impossible, but with as much shape as the man in his arms…He ran.

As soon as Butch settled into something more like trembling, than bucking and moaning, he left. And as the door closed behind him, his mind closed and in between animal growls and desperate need, he defiled his bed, his body and his perverted mind, he hurt himself and fell asleep cupping his abused, scared groin, cursing his impotence to defy biology, but reaching, even in sleep, to the calling of his blood and scent in the other room.

He disguised it ever since in the addictive, perfumed scent of his tobacco. How fitting, to have a bonding fragrance so close to the smell of burning. He smoked, and smoked and smoked and hid.

 He told the cop about his visions, told him about the missions and their tactics in this war. He couldn’t let him fight, fuck that, but he could talk to him, because at the end of the night, it was the thing that gave him the very reason to be out there. Not his species, not the need to kill, or protect, not even his Brothers. He only did it for that moment when coming back to the Pit, the cop would wait for him with a glass of Goose and ruffled hair, a little sleepy, but never asleep.

He told him about his hand. It was after a serious encounter and his arm was slashed. He did the patching anyway, so he went directly back to the Pit and his medical kit in the bathroom. Butch didn’t freak out, he was used to it by now. But when trying to ask what happened, he came too close and that cursed hand had melted the glove, and fuck…he couldn’t be touched. Wanted, but couldn’t. And so rarely he wanted, so rarely and only by his cop.

“Stay away, Butch.”

So he just stood there, in the doorframe, looking pissed and trying hard to keep his mouth shut. Of course he couldn’t pull that off for long. He was sometimes the spitting image of Rhage.

“So V, you could use a little back up on the streets.”

“Not gonna happen, my man.”

“How do you know? Wrath can come to appreciate my …skills. I’m an ace at target practice. Time for daddy to let me go hunting for reals. So I think I’ll talk to him.”

V threw the needle in the sink and turned slowly, as to make a point, trying hard not to sound like a dungeon master.

“Cop…do you see this hand?”

The cop nodded, the muscles in his face, his jaw contracting.

“In the palm of my hand I hold the fucking sun. It’s not a metaphor. I could burn down this room, this house, this hill, this county.”

V saw how the cop looked at it and started to rewind, in his memory, all the moments when that hand was on him. Oh, V knew them precisely. Because he had to make special efforts to stop the light, he had to keep it away, contained and undemanding.

And it was insane, but much like Rhages’ beast craving for Mary, his cursed hand craved his cop.

“If that’s a threat hommie-“

“Yeah, take the piss, but listen. I’m telling you that I have this as a weapon and tonight you can still see the bone on my arm. You could die from a wound like this. You would die. And all I can do is watch if this happens to you.”

He was close, so close, that hand hovering over the chest of the male, but his eyes were defying him, not once looking down. Stubborn son of a bitch.

“You’re not going out, your blood stays inside you and you stay alive. True?”

“So… useless.”

He grabbed the cops’ neck and joined their heads.

“If there was a way…” he wanted to say that he would have him by his side. Every night. Like the warrior he was. But the risks, he couldn’t let him take them. Selfish, yeah, but necessary.  Fuck the mated male bond, no. This was common sense.

“Yeah, I know, I’m just a human,” the cop whispered, closing his eyes and pulling out of the bubble. As he did, he grabbed that hand, calm and unfazed, took the towel to the cut and pressed on it.

“Here. Hold this.”

It took a moment for V to react, because the cop had just cleaned his arm, in a swipe, from elbow to palm. To his cursed palm. Death wish. The ex cop still had that death wish.

 “And V…”

“Mhm…”

“I want to do it because I want your blood …and that of the Brothers, to stay inside you too. You’re all I have.”

And he left him there, floored and bleeding on the cold floor more than his blood.

Yeah, he talked to Butch. Some nights were not that intense. Just two guys talking. Couple of days after that confrontation, during a game, the cop made V melt a few things with his hand. Just for the fun of it. And he did, laughing and showing off, feeling less like a freak the more he made the cop marvel and clap.  

“Man, that’s some neat party trick.”

“Yeah, if you wanna off the guests.”

“Is that what the tattoo says? To be used in case of unwanted quests?” he boomed, laughing, until he saw that V wasn’t joining in.

“V? Sorry, I…”

“Yeah…no…something like that,” he snapped out of it but couldn’t bring himself to translate the tattoo. It felt like if the warning was out there, he was somehow less worthy to stay by Butchs’ side. So he got the whole dress to impress Butch did for Marissa.

Butch wasn’t perfect. With his drinking and recklessness, he was maybe just south of the word damaged. But that need to make himself something he was not made him crazy.  Go ahead, buy all the nice, expensive threads you like. Never wear the same thing twice.

Fuck, V sometimes fantasized about him in that custom tailored Zegna, mostly taking the thing apart and tying his hands with that red Brioni he once saw hanging loose on him and made him bite the inside of his cheek to keep from moaning. But don’t do it because you feel you have to impress someone. Do it because you like it.  And don’t feel guilty. Never feel guilty.

_Not like me_

**They say nurturing loving behaviors** include care-giving, emotional reinforcement, supportiveness, sustenance provision, relief giving, advocacy, training and education, guidance, bonding experiences, plus any and all actions which may help sustain or advance a loved one in their well-being.

Check, check, check, almost check and check the fuck out of actions which may help sustain or advance a loved one in their well-being.

So V was there when Butch was taking the Lag train to oblivion, he even bought him the fucking drink. He lend him the car to go stalking, never once advised him against it. All the while, asking for nothing in return. Not a change, not a favor, not one single act of reciprocation. Nothing more than _Be you, be alive and be near._

 When the lessers took his cop, all those three little things needed for him to stay sane evaporated. The relief, that lasted for a heartbeat. His blood in him will take him there.

But he couldn’t predict if he would come out of it alive if Butch wasn’t. He almost didn’t.

Trapped inside by sunlight, he had to call Phury to make sure he won’t get out the door and fry himself. The Brother –almost- understood, after what happened with Z and with…Bella.

It was the second time he showed weakness in front of him and that had to be a strategically wrong decision. But he was buzzing with the need to go, and that would have been an even greater mistake. Like fatally wrong.

“Phury…” he said, barely there, like a plea, like a calling, because he couldn’t say more, head against the front door. He still didn’t know what Butch was to him, but sure as shit it wasn’t just limerent, lust or attraction.

“We’ll get him back.”

_I’ll get him back. He’s mine._

“We have to tell the others.”

_I have to find him_

_“_ We’ll all search for him.”

_He has me in him, I know how to find him_

“V…snap out of it. You’re not helping him like this!”

 “No!” he growled, “because I can fucking read minds and torch the earth and see the future, but I can’t walk out into the sun. Or I think I can’t …”

“Hey, let’s not try that, ok. Let’s talk to the others.”

He let himself be convinced. Not because he saw reason, but because he only had a 50-50 chance with the sun and he couldn’t take those odds when it meant the same for the cop.   

When he was near him, the evil couldn’t stop him. The blood didn’t scare him. But the thought that he wasn’t enough or what the male needed was paralyzing. He didn’t save Butch for himself. He didn’t see the fact that his light was what cured him as a sign.

In the terror of losing him, he saw himself as the culprit for all this. For bringing him into their world, for making him believe he shouldn’t betray them to stay safe, for arming him, for leaving him, for keeping him.

So he let go. For Butch.

And the strange thing is it hurt less than the thought of him claiming him and then witnessing Butch die at the hands of his enemies, his name going cold and pale on the back of that male. His blood losing his calling.

It still hurt like nothing else he ever felt, but... The strange thing is that he could let go.

That’s how he knew it was attachment. Because he could let go in order to make the other happy, safe and loved with a protective love, not an all consuming one.  

He was in lo-No! He loved. For the first time in existence. So he called Marissa, sent her to Butch, walked out onto the terrace up at the Commodore and threw himself off. At the last second, he dematerialized back up, bit his hand to muffle the sounds… and let go. Of his loved one.  

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have this crazy headcanon that V smokes to desguise his bonding scent. What do you think so far?


	5. PTSD

Guilt, shame, and self-blame? It rhymes, really, all those three, wrapped up in a fucked up vampire package. He went to Butch every day. Twice. The first thing he did and the last, before retiring to his penthouse and just…existing. It wasn’t life anymore. Not as it has been.

He avoided the Pit because it felt like a punch to his stomach, and he avoided sex because, even if he could, let’s pretend, get it up, and it wasn’t always necessary,  even if he could muster the will to dom someone, he would still feel trapped and exposed and helpless. He catalogued the feelings, the tells someone could read and he buried them deep, as deep as his needs.

It was all about the cop and him returning. Not to him, but to life.

So he went and healed him, every day, without touching, never touching what wasn’t and never could be his. That long stretch of skin, muscle and imperfections, surrendered down in front of him, because of him.

In the little REM he got, he was haunted by the scars and bruises on that body. And longed for them to be transferred on his skin. Needed them too. But to put Phury through such ordeal, to put himself out there and admit he was broken, that, he couldn’t do. He was alone and now he felt it.

He prayed to gods he knew, and to those he read about, in sixteen languages, never believing, but hoping, when standing above Butch, something will make that body whole again. Make those eyes open. He cursed the skip in his treacherous heart whenever the cop turned to him like a mad man to the light of reason and breathed out, like he somehow saved him.    

God, the contradictions he felt…they were tearing him apart. He put him there, on that bed, in that room, in that beaten body. But he also was the only one willing him back to light. And every day, as he cleaned him, he cleaned her, for her to be healthy, pristine and perfect, just fucking perfect for his cop. 

And as soon as he was out, he washed himself, scrubbing hard and ruthless. Not because he was afraid of the infection, he would welcome it. But to get her scent out off him and irrationally hoping he’ll somehow be able to exfoliate the glands responsible for releasing his bonding scent.  

He still doesn’t know how he was able to get through those four days until the cop woke up. The first day he almost killed himself, the second he almost killed a Brother.

He was out of the room where Butch lay the same, and the reality felt like too much. He was trembling so bad with the exhaustion of keeping the cursed light channeled, and the bonding need at bay, he passed by and crashed into Rhage, blind and desperate for a hand-rolled.

“What in the name of the Virgin were you thinking to let that female in there?”

Slowly, don’t melt the lighter.

“V! Fuck you, man, it’s …you can’t risk-“

He phased out. One second he was hunched over the flame on the lighter, trying to catch it on the tip of his smoke, the other he was punching the wall next to Rhages’ head, a death grip on the male, and biting into words.

“I’ll risk anything. Her, me...” a fist punctuating every word. “Everything it takes. Do you hear me? Everything. And if the next words coming out of your mouth are anything other than O and K, I don’t know man, I don’t know…”

Rhage just stood there, looked at him, really looked at him and then wrapped him in a hug he resented at first. He sagged into it for a moment, before pushing himself out of the closeness, so close, too close, too knowing and dematerialized without a word.

               And the third night, he almost fucked his own plan, when Marissa released that sweet smell of arousal.

He was standing deadly still, eyes closed in front of the nakedness, palm hovering at a safe distance. Just a few moments more. Just a little more.

Even if he was tapped out, dry and one step close to asking-for-a-bed  beat. The evil was turning him into a walking nightmare. The last dream he had was a mindfuck, going from having Butch on his table, moaning and stretching in pleasure, to seeing himself as the torturer, as nail was joining nail on the floor and screams made him deaf and begging made him want to kill himself.

And the moment he smelled her, the need to force her out of the room, get undressed and horizontal next to that body was so powerful he actually whimpered. Like a dog. He felt like throwing up.

Instead, he stopped the healing, because he couldn’t go on pouring light into him when all he felt was darkness, and caught her eyes. She turned her look down, like the lady she was, but he could see what she saw. A body made to be alive, flesh made to be roused and worked into pleasure. He hated her. He really did. Or something close to it… But he still cleaned her and left her there, because Butch asked for her, wanted her and would take her, if she could just fucking say yes.

Butch woke up on the fourth day, weak as a kitten, but it felt like Christmas Day and Apocalypse day at the same time. He asked for permission to heal him this time, because now maybe the cop will reject him, and then, when he felt needed, he didn’t let go until Butch fell asleep under his hand.

It was good. But it felt like the end of something. With Marissa there, he needed to leave, let go, give life to his cop, not pieces of unwanted, unneeded and incomplete self.

 He’ll give him everything, now. All that he would ask.  

And as Marissa confronted him and said loud and clear that she’ll have Butch, and then, as he watched, petrified, on the monitors, she did have him, he even let himself see that picture. Yeah, it felt like leftovers, to share…but it was more than he could hope. More perversion, so much more degradation.

In his mind, he saw himself watching the couple fuck on his virgin bed at the Commodore, sweat and other liquids staining the black sheets. He heard them pant and lick and touched his cock to the rhythm of their coupling, wet and erotic noises bouncing on walls and his six chambered heart.

And then Butch would look to him and the look wouldn’t be one of disgust. He would suck the females’ fingers staring at him, blushing and maybe a little confused. And that mix of feelings, the dare and the fear, would lasso V closer, at the edge of the bed. He would release his pulsing length, and the frantic breath would make it jump in sync with that mouth licking, slowly, at flesh, a phantom blowjob left at that, but also, too much.

Marissa would moan, demanding, and Butch would mount her, muscles dancing, covered in need and restraint, still facing Vishous and his silent wonder and voyeurism.

She would extend an arm to V, over her head, and grip his sack, bringing him closer, because he would, obedient and defeated. He would follow her command as long as those eyes, hazel, hooded eyes, were on him.

The scene ends when Butch takes hold of him, the sex exchanging hands, from delicate to encompassing, and the electric charge in the fantasy is enough to make his real self buzz, harden and demand release. It ends, he knows, because no matter how perverted his sex life is, no matter how much and how many he did, he can’t imagine what kissing would feel like.

He thinks kissing is next…he thinks, he wants, he craves? He doesn’t know why that instead of something else. Impossible, never to be had, yes, but not as the impossibility the other scenario offers: he never revealed his sex to anyone. To have someone swallow him would be to trust that someone. And he never trusted any of his partners for that.

And Butch…to put his mouth there, on him, would be to acknowledge him completely, as a male. And to acknowledge himself as what he would see like a sinner.

A touch can be written off, a kiss can be diluted with the lips of a woman, because lips are lips. But the slow closure of those full lips over his cock is so … is so impossible, that he can’t even fantasize about it. Yeah, he’s that sick, that helpless.

And it feels like a victory, every time he stops the wanting, the imagination, is almost like he’s proud of himself that he doesn’t dirty the cop with his aberrations. 

Of course he can’t ask him to choose. Of course the man already did. Of course it can’t be him and it should be her. Of fucking course V will make everything in his powers to persuade her, if needed. 

Of course, denying his bond and fracturing himself, the insane ride he can’t decide whether to curse, or bless, because it’s better to have him near, than not at all, isn’t it? Well, it all -almost-makes him mental. But he’s Vishous and PTSD is just the fucking hors d’oeuvre in his menu, or better yet, the water he drinks throughout the meal.

Being tortured by his father was a trauma. Being alone was not.

Wanting Butch and not having him was not a trauma. Understanding he never had a chance, _was_.

           

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some light reading into PTSD. Maybe you'll see the signs I did in V's behaviour.  
> http://www.helpguide.org/articles/ptsd-trauma/post-traumatic-stress-disorder.htm  
> https://www.adaa.org/understanding-anxiety/posttraumatic-stress-disorder-ptsd/symptoms
> 
> The story of Vishous is maybe one of the saddest I read, even more so than that of Heathcliff, the father of all tragic heroes, for me. And it will never stop to make me angry.  
> What do you think?


	6. GRIEF

4.1 Denial

He felt parts of the future changing, but he was blind to them, and that, on top of everything else was too much. He started to ask himself if letting go without a fight – a notion unknown to him-was the right…well, that word can’t belong in his dictionary, right? …letting go was the only way to go.

He can’t bond with Butch.

Like with any addiction, the first thing you want is pick it up again. And this was addiction times a thousand. You think that you can cut down on it, that you can control it, and you only have it because it’s something you like, not something that owns you.

Denial. Goes with vodka like jerking off with a cactus glove. Well, for him that might…oh, fuck.  

You can make things fit and explain them as long as you’re awake and as long as you’re clear minded. But horny and confused and in that blissful state of drunkenness that lasted for about 2 hours with vampires, he was dead meet in front of a big ol’ fucktrain.  

He found himself at the Pit, in the cop’s room, surrounded by his clothes, one hand holding the blunt, another picking up the best clothes for the male. Like he had any fucking idea what those were…except that he did, he fucking did. Down to the loafers, he knew what Butch would want on his body. Something warm, silky, high end, soft, exquisite and _not_ him.

He can’t bond with Butch.

Not from the way he felt. Not …normal. Not like _she_ did. He hated that he referred to her as her, as though it was obvious. It was...It was never a matter of fighting for what he wanted. Maybe even the opposite, him pushing against it all the way, not the feeling, but the taking, a game of two against none, because he was playing for Marissa’s team too. And he will continue to do so, for as long as the cop wanted her.

And still, that nagging thought, the completely wrong sense of entitlement…it went in the cracks of his splintered self and took space. No matter how often he cut the roots, it was enough for the cop to not have the female near and V would want…need…surrender…

He can’t bond with Butch.

Fuck, he can push her to him, and make sure she means it, but he can’t make her behave the way he would…The way he would? Hah. What a joke. He didn’t even begin to imagine himself that. Wanted. Surrendered. Loved. Bonded. And belonging.

What he does know, thanks to the private session he witnessed on the monitors, is that it would break him. For better or for worse, he would collapse entirely, body and soul, into the hands of the other. No, not the _other._ Butch. Only him. With his hungry but contained hands, his devotion in fucking until the word “fucking” becomes not even a memory, nor a swear word and all you think is love and passion and more, more, more…

And his conquering body, like the peace given by a perfect argument, one you don’t fight, but crave with all your being.

He can’t bond with Butch.

He wanted, but couldn’t take. Not like he took his subs, not like he had that male the other night, spread over his table. It was hard, mad and totally pathetic, because at the end, he couldn’t even imagine his cop in that body, like he planned to do.

He felt the need to apologize for staining the cop like that.    

He told Butch all that in the silent air and space evaporated from between their bodies, outside Havers, as he assured him he wasn’t a lesser. And never, ever his enemy. Because he rejected that conclusion.

But not the same way he rejected the notion that his blind desperation comes from love.

He can’t bond with Butch.

And in that moment, when the desperation in his cop made him angry, as he held him close and asked How do you know I’m not becoming a lesser?, it was the second time he lied to himself, not caring about the consequences. More than a desperate hug that left him hard and left them awkward, it was a promise.  

_“You are my only friend. Never my enemy."_

Not the one he loves, not the one he craves, not his mate. But what the cop needs. His friend. His perverted, barely contained …friend.

Later, he would think about the night Butch was alone at Havers and the doctor called to prepare him…Maybe he’s not just a human, but he is dying… nonetheless. And the doctor said We can pray. It seemed like a real option for the first time in his life outside his father’s camp. But it felt like cheating, it was a non action, it was too much like hoping. It felt useless and _he_ felt useless and...

Not a week later and he found himself again facing that necessity. Watching Butch go to those lessers, like knowing them, like them accepting him, waiting for him…something broke inside V then. And as he remembered the words of Havers, he heard himself scream, on the inside:

_Pray to whom. Tell me and I will!_

In the end he didn’t. The need and panic made him barely function. Dream. Hide. Deny himself relief but trying every moment to bring it to Butch. Like a friend would. He thinks, can’t know for sure. What a friend would do…

A friend that wears his shirt when talking to her, just to prove a point. Or try to prove a point, or…fuck, he didn’t know why he put that shirt on. He just did. It felt strange but not foreign, like the thing he felt for his cop.

He can’t bond with Butch.

He knew who Butch was. From that first night. It’s wrong, they say, all the lines written by all the authors on the world, they say it’s wrong to fall for someone’s darkness and worse yet, to not try and fix it. Not healthy. But he was not a part of that world, and was not concerned with the consequences. Because he always thought he could stop or control this. Until he couldn’t. The moments when he called him to hear his voice, or just shut up to listen to his breathing.

Or when he kissed his skin, after licking his blood, not black anymore. God, the cop’s  blood. He didn’t know if he was allowed, but he took. Like the old Vishous. The one free of this crippling …sentiment.

He can’t bond with Butch.

For a moment, he let himself go, lifted the ban and made the bathroom where the cop cut himself a small alternate universe where he can do that. He can put his lips to the skin of the cop. Because he hated to see his blood on him, but somehow, he also craved his blood, like it wasn’t impossible, or unnecessary or not enough. Because it felt natural, risks and all be damned.

That night his appetite ravaged his insides. Bloodlust took over. He had a sub under him and he plunged inside her, fangs and cock, pumping, sucking, until the world was just animal instinct and no traces of that taste and feeling were left.

He can’t bond with Butch.

He could make a list of reasons why it wasn’t what it was, or shouldn’t be and never could be. Start the list with: he doesn’t want me, continue with he’s a human male, he can’t feed me, I can’t feed him.

But it didn’t really matter, did it? What Butch could do for him. Breathing, yeah, he could do that and it would be enough.

That’s why he did it. Made him immortal. Nearly. Almost. Close enough. That’s why he turned him. Was it?

He tries to tell himself that it wasn’t the desperation he felt when Butch threatened to leave. Or when he knew he’ll never let go of the fight with the lessers. It wasn’t the need to have him close for as many years as a human life couldn’t allow. He tells himself this. And he curses himself, because denial is never a good place to be.

The moment the cop said yes, and he had his hand over his body, ready to start the regression, he felt it. The start of a loss. It grew in him, making him miserable and angry. And he was certain it wasn’t because something will happen to Butch. More likely, something was happening to him.

He will make the cop a vampire. He’ll carry him, with his teeth, if needed, into his world. He needs him. He wants him. He’s the one he should have. And it’s all good and dandy, except that Butch does this so he can be with the woman he wants.  

Tough shit. What do you do, stop?

No, you burn! Light and rope like desire and so much, too much anger.

“Let yourself go, cop.  Fall… in… to… me…"

_Be mine_

He was bonded to Butch. And the moment he’ll bring him into this new world, he’ll lose him. No. He was never his to be lost, right? Wrong, wrong!

He dreamed him, he saved him, he can heal him, he understands him, he wants him, he fed him, he’ll give him a new life.

He… God, he felt entitled to have him. Like he could ask for something like the cop. Like he could deserve him.

Yeah, get that into your head, Vishous reasoned with himself. Understand this: you can’t have him. Not like that, not like the way you can’t even image, because you don’t know. You can’t experiment on him, the learning of loving behavior, you can’t expect him to be brutal with you because it’s the only way you can fuck and no way can you ask him to teach you tenderness is not lethal, by making love to you.

You can’t have him as your first kiss, V thinks as he kisses Marissa’s wrist and he feels Butch there…more present than on that bottle of Lag, but as far away as the man himself.   

And it burns, down his throat, in the pit of his stomach, behind his eyes, the need to release his scent and the pain of holding it in. It burns and it hurts and he doesn’t know what to do with himself anymore, because this feels like something he never felt before and all that’s left, when the bulk of the cop’s new body moves into life, is soul tearing contradictions: relief to have something, anger to have too little, self blame to feel this is not enough.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some light reading about Stages of Grief/Loss  
> http://psychcentral.com/lib/the-5-stages-of-loss-and-grief/  
> http://grief.com/the-five-stages-of-grief/
> 
> You can see where this is going, right? :)


	7. GRIEF

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for your kudos and comments. It motivates me like crazy :))  
> This chapter took longer than expected to write and it feels...a little suffocating... I think? I wanna hear from you, because I'll never be able to objectively evaluate my own writing :)

 Anger

When he’s mad, he moves mountains. He does shit, he takes care of stuff, even better than in the moments when he’s completely calm. He welcomes anger, like an old enemy you feel like motivates you to live in constant preparation. If anger would be a person, it would give him the perfect kind of fuck. Like this, not a person, but an intermittent buzzing pressure inside his veins, redecorating his insides, deforming skin with ridges and blue-green deformed worms, it just fucks him up.

He’s not thinking straight when he propose to Wrath that Butch should come to the meetings and then take shifts on the street. He’s angry with the cop. He contemplates the silent treatment, but that’s so five years old behavior. 

He also contemplated something like this:

In the darkness where he doesn’t really sleep, not anymore, he waits for her –stalk her, hides from her – until she leaves, wearing his scent. He moves slowly, hoping that on the way there his mind will take over, but he knows, somewhere deep inside- in the still sane part of him that never switches of- that it doesn’t work like that and when adrenalin kicks in, you’re even more gone than when you are driven by madness.

He feels the floor, because he’s barefoot and he convinces himself it’s because he’s at home. But really, it’s because he’s on the hunt and noise can scare the pray.

His head tilts to the left, like the demon on his shoulder said something, but it’s just his heart, doubling up in speed and filling the jugular with poisoned, hot blood, when he thinks of Butch as prey.

His nipples harden when a button touches one as he undresses and lets the shirt fall, slowly, unconsciously, on the defiled floor taking him to the cop. His sex needs none of that. It’s ready for the sacrilege.

He’s not a good male. Never been, not even when random acts of kindness seemed selfless. He’s a mix of monstrous desires and self contained rules of operation. He’s a battlefield, every day, every hour of his life. He’s not a male of worth. So he doesn’t knock. But he does kneel, once inside, moving back and forth on the balls of his feet.

The growl is animal like and so is him, so it’s fine. It can’t be mistaken for the alarm’s ringtone, so Butch wakes up and stares him down. He’s spent and confused and V hates him, in that moment, like he never thought he could.

“You’re mine,” he says from his worship position, or crouch, to be more exact, because he doesn’t stop moving towards the bed, where the cop is not the pray anymore, but the sacrifice. At that time, when this scenario plays in his head, his tired so tired head, he doesn’t know yet that he is, indeed, a god.

Yeah, he also imagined that, but _that_ would be so much like rape, like stealing, like invading, even if in that scenario Butch sees the pain and somehow, out of mercy, he reaches to him – like he always does, but not for that.

The cop reaches and he crawls to him, less V after every foot of advance, until finally, when he reaches the warm bed, finally, when he comes to meet him, hungry, finally when Butch catches his face…he’s not him at all. He’s her.

And that hate and anger that propels him backwards, out of the bed, out of the room, out of the hallucination, makes as much sense. All the things he does that he’s angry at, he wants to see in her, for him. And when he does see it, he resents her for feeling them, as if feelings can be trademarks for a single being, for him. 

What a joke. You’re the joke, he tells himself. A punch line written in fine print on a lamppost’s Missing sign no one even cares to look at. Because it’s not a person missing, it’s a sense of being. And nobody cares about his philosophy of being whole.

He whispers in Wrath’s ear because he can and she can’t. It’s the single most selfish and idiotic thing he ever did. Out of spite and anger, and a little, just the right amount of entitlement, he wants him to fight. For your race. Yeah, fuck that. It’s for him. The only thing Butch can do for him. And him for the cop.

He wanted….no- he _accepted -_ she can be good to him because he thought she can protect him. Her perfect eyes can convince him to stay out of danger, her perfect mouth can suck him into bliss, her perfect skin can contain, in the traces he leaves, the answers he searches for and the reason to want to live.

He can be the hero every time he makes her – surely – perfect sex to swell and come, he can find his meaning in her –fucking perfect – moans and breasts and skin and every fucking thing he could never, ever be, or want to become.

She’s perfect for what Butch wants. But Butch is perfect for what V needs, so the moment that male is partly – mostly, he feels – his, as in his species, a vampire, he goes against every calculated step and painfully felt concession he made from the moment he sent Marissa to his cop. And he steals him back, in anger, like a big fuck you sign, mostly, to himself.

Because the part of Butch that reaches for his light is his, even if it kills him to see the cop like that. Even if after he convinces Wrath and the decision is relayed that the male should come to the Brotherhood meetings, he dry heaves on the floor of the nearest bathroom and his body folds neatly into the shape of a miscarried embryo who should have just died, if there is any mercy left in the world.

Alongside this reality, it feels like another is playing out, a split screen running two movies that have the same actors, but as one develops into a love story, the other is a gruesome psychological thriller. And it’s Sunday night, so nobody wants to watch how a pathetic MC fights –for the most part – with his own mind and everybody knows already, from the synopsis, that the HEA is never coming. Because the guy is too busy being creepy and sick and not for a moment true to the other guy about what he feels.

So the audience switches to the love story. Because the female lead is drop dead gorgeous, and the guy has it so much better in this than in the thriller. What over there would be a sinister sex session with gag balls and leather, here is face to face, naked and equal love making. There he would have to learn pain to give pleasure, here he’ll forget pain by feeling pleasure.  

 And the rich girl-poor boy storyline captivates, in secret, even the guy’s attention. Or maybe it’s just her boobs. No matter. The other half of the screen is forgotten, to the point that the MC stops acting, head in hands and sits, his back to the screen dividing line and listens to the dialogue, the noises, the life from the other movie.

He falls for that male lead too, because he’s the same beat up cop, with a heart bigger than his six chambered one, with a death wish to haunt him and unspeakable courage not to surrender. He falls for him every time. You can see that from how he relaxes his posture when he speaks, like his words are lullabies for a tormented soul, even the Fuck and Shit and Mary mother of God. 

And he is ambivalent towards the female lead, as shown by the incremental movements of his well contained hands, as if to strangle, as if to caress.  

Small, boring movements, predictable, until he fades, to black, his The End definitive, accepted and watched by no one.

Vishous feels like that when, in rage, makes Wrath see his way and hears Phury tell it to Butch and hears Butch ask the why and how and bites his tongue to shut up.

But then his anger is towards himself and he can’t take the thought that maybe, maybe, it was all calculated, and all this is not out of spite, for Marissa to cry, but out of a twisted sense of accountability, for the Brotherhood to live. Without him. With another as a brother, with Butch as his replacement within the ranks. For as the male goes out on his first patrol –one he should witness, he really should, aches for it, wants it, out of fear and pride and love, but doesn’t-  V goes up, up to his penthouse and throw himself off the goddamn building.  

And then he’s in the cop’s arms, lips touching his strong, warm, pulsing neck, the most intimate kiss he ever gave another living creature, the most intimate self he ever was.

_Mine, mine, mine_

After he told the cop he watched him in the clinic, saw him take her, and almost, almost told him he loved him, loved him more than her, loved him

_so you can choose, so tell me to fuck off_

…almost says it, but doesn’t. Because this is not that romantic movie, is it? Even if…

_Mine, mine, mine_

So all he says is burning with meaning and need and so much yearning he’s sure this hurts more that the impact would have. As much as he hates himself, he doesn’t want to die. He wants to belong. In this, to this, to _him_.

_Mine, mine, mine_

Him naked and pouring out his soul, devoting his body and Butch wrapped around him, strong, receiving, protecting, the two of them high up in the sky, entwined in the midst of a cold wind. The moment he dreamed of. Neither the moment of his bonding, not that of his death. Or…as it feels, the moment of both.

When he’s mad, he moves mountains. So he places one on top of his pathetic need and love declarations and suicide thoughts and soldiers on, because he can, he should, he ought to live with just this. With the knowledge that his light is to be his light and in that moment, when he’ll be death and destruction and smell and feel like your enemies, he’ll join him, head to toe, and claim him and make love to him in the only way, the best way, the safest way he can and is allowed: by pouring his light into his veins, marking him inside and out as no one else, female or male, can or ever will. He’ll be his, for as long as he’ll need him.

And need is more important than want, is it not? Bullshit. Because want is what started to build up the anger in him, like sperm hardening the sack, but he can’t get a release, not even the hard core type. All that pent-up feeling, muzzled like you would a killer Doberman, seeps through when he touches him, right to the point where he comes, semen mixing with his blood, on his induction ceremony night.

And he can’t think about how the Brothers will _know_ if they didn’t already, what he feels. He can’t reason with his hand to release the cop’s neck and squeeze the tip of his perverted cock, to stop the spillage, the degrading confession, the pathetic slip of his already shattered mask. No, his mind stops that, eventually.

All he knows –no, forget that, he _knows_ nothing, deliriously intoxicated as he is- all he _feels_ , as Butch’s blood –burning- fills him and his seed –cooling- smears his skin, is the moment the cop lets himself feel it, smell the moment he wants it, drown in the moment he gives himself and die the moment he shuts him out again.

The separation from that naked body he dreamed again and again of holding, carrying the scent of him and wet on his fluids, he himself reluctant to let go, as he carries his marks and smell of his blood and both their desires, is not what leaves him empty.

Not the avoiding glances of his Brothers, disguised and protective of this insurmountable confession, not the way he has to wipe his marks from his skin before he leaves and trembles in the knowledge that it’s there still.

When he’s mad, he moves mountains. But he’s not angry anymore. What makes him empty - and emptiness is worse than mad, worse than powerless, worse than dead…or alive- is the realization that should he have asked like this, in another life, Butch would have said Yes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, I made V do THAT in the induction, because it's possible and incredibly hot and sad and instinctive and uncontrollable. And if Butch's body did it, so should V at tasting the blood of this ...phyrocant of his. And it may be a little far fetched, but...it's fanfiction and eeeverything should (should it?) be possible.


	8. GRIEF

Bargaining and Depression

Empty corpses have no mind to think of what ifs. What they do have is space to be filled. He negotiates only the things he can’t allow inside himself: no more blame. The rest, he accepts, he even searches.

He says no to the Primale position and as it is, to his lineage and his newly revealed fate as savior of his race, because faceless sex is behind him and he’s ruined like that, to know what he wants now after never even having it.

A warm body convulsing under him, sweat and other fluids not drowning noises, but amplifying them, and arms around his tainted body, scratching away at loneliness with trembling fingertips, guiding him into his own release, kissing his tattoos away and looking into his eyes. The tenderness so suffocating it regulates the beatings of his frantic heart to the rhythm of a life he imagines even he can deserve, and slowing his mind enough to stop thinking ahead this moment already, frantic about when or how or why he did to do deserve it.

It’s the only fantasy he keeps, along with that word he uttered in between shoulders, head hung low over the sink, whispered in between gulps of vodka, screamed to the fainting buzz his mother left behind after condemning him, pressed deep into the pillow, eyes fixed on the blank wall, again and again and again, until there’s no more spit and no more voice and no more resentment and no more does that word feel like something forbidden to him, a languages wiz. But it also never does feel, when rolling out of him, as something foreign, as he always expected it should.

_Mine_

And how fitting, for him to find her in that hospital, as his cop was looking for him on the streets. A MINE in both mouths, his and the cop’s and both intended as something else, words, not declarations.

He feels Butch’s pulse, faster and faster, like the one in his fantasy, telling him he does good, and the result is the same, him going on. In the fantasy, burying himself deeper, here, on the backseat of the car driving him back home, keeping him afloat.

So he listens to it and wonders, numbly, how many times, exactly, with decimals and all, will he be able to do this before sinking his fangs into that flesh again, mating and reciprocation and righteousness be damned. 

So he tries. Some humans go to support groups, some eat cake or ice cream, for whatever magical proprieties those supposedly have, others keep returning to places and phrases to make them remember themselves. What V does is comparative analysis or replication, he tells himself.

Later, he knows it was cheating his way out of a stage, anything to feel less like a powerless creature he hates even more than he did the twisted one.

He starts rebuilding his former self, messes up the whole thing by mellowing the reality of a self constructed in over three centuries that demands not to be denied.

The sex, the movement poetry, the small gestures of learned love, the honesty, from the practices of the mated brothers, the banter and the head on collisions never fully formed into detonations with Jane, all steps in a rehabilitation that he doesn’t start to question as from what exactly.

Until he suddenly does.

In bed, the cop pressed head to toes alongside him, still feeling the strength in Marissa’s blood, V knows what this is. In the air traded between their close faces, he asks, in no words at all, if he can keep the lesson of love, but exchange the recipient. And Butch breathes.

In the strength keeping their hands together, he asks if the lesson there was that want burns brighter when is felt by one, or if a reciprocated conquest would destroy him. And Butch breathes.

 In the shared knowledge that at a certain point, Butch wanted him too, maybe a little, and the foretelling of a future where touch is all they will share, Vishous asks if now, knowing how the cop feels like on his skin is a blessing or an itch that’ll gnaw under the surface of every relationship he’ll have. And Butch breathes, healed and himself again, a separate entity from V in all but one thing: his vow to the Brotherhood.   

The fantasies fall one by one.

No more hazy Butch looking up at him as his light fills him and he’s caressing his tattoos.

_“This lie, you know,” he says and V’s eyes close as a mechanic reaction._

_“How’s that? Do you take ancient language classes now with someone else than me, or do you bend your ear to gossip? Either way, I’m hurt, cop.”_

_“Can you be serious for a minute? I’m trying to tell you something.”_

_“And I’m trying my damn best to shut you up.”_

_“When did that ever work?”_

_“I know,” and -I have to try- is left unsaid, because the hand is still touching his skin and even the ink in the tattoos follows its trail, like little iron moths drawn to a magnet._

_“You’re not what they say.”_

_“Maybe I am.”_

_“No V, he didn’t know you when he had these made. Or maybe he was afraid of you, even then.”_

_“He didn’t want to know me. He wanted me to be like him. They’re not …warnings, they’re his wishes for me.”_

_“Good thing some don’t give a fuck about what he wished for you to be.”_

_“Bad thing I’m almost that.”_

_“No, you’re V.”_

_“Don’t do that.”_

_“What?”_

_“Say it like it’s enough.”_

_Butch looks at him then, hard and taken aback, because he started this, but the outcome, he was not prepared for. He understands the cop’s intentions, but can’t go on pretending this, this embrace, the lingering touch, his words, are not more, for him._

_And Butch knows what this reverts to. Well, what the hell did he think? He then backs off, maddeningly careful, as if he shutting V out is more painful than him talking like that, touching him like that, understanding and deconstructing him._

_“I can’t do this,” he says, retreating and of course V knows, he knows and wishes Butch would just shut up enough for him to do his job and heal him. So he catches his retreat, plays dumb, plays deaf, plays._

_“Do what,” he growls as a possessive arm circles the cop’s body to keep him close until he settles, huffs a defeated breath and hides his face in V’s neck._

_“Be here with you like this.”_

_V doesn’t ask why, even if he wants to know, like in a logic problem, all the syllogisms and propositions and deconstruct them or at least let them convince him. Instead, he unfolds himself from Butch, inch by inch, limb by limb, until only his hand hovers above the infected stomach._

_“Of course you can. All you have to do is stand there.” And -I’m the one falling- is still left unsaid._

In the end, number four on V’s I hate list, stating the obvious, has to be tackled and he says it. _When I was in love with you_ -muddled in jokes instead of punctuated by hungry thrusts-and _It’s all in the past now_ and it feels like denial all over again, except it should feel like release and acceptance.

His happily ever after, it seems, is a mix of elements, just like everything else in his life – vodka and sentiment, sex and control, domination and release, belonging and loneliness, genius and madness, power and helplessness.

His HEA is the blend of an unrequited love he feels imprinted on his bones but never had a kiss with and a reciprocated love that feels light on his skin but doesn’t scorch his insides to erase the other.

One never to be his and one his to end of days, both from unlikely beings that he created. And now, both diluted by the presence of the other. And not enough.

 

The fall takes less than anticipated, a string of blows to the body and mind. His sister, his …wife, his something else than friend who knows no boundaries and with whom not even close is close enough, they all contribute. Everything swirls in nauseating unequal circles, a phobia of sorts taking over his mind as pain seems the only answer to the riddle of how to be the way he was.

If he was honest with himself, and mostly, he was, in the private, rational part of him, closed off and nourished with care, he knows he should have asked Phury. He had the experience and the event would be considerable less traumatic, because V wasn’t his twin. They would both live, soul intact. But the moment the offer stood there, from his cop, clouding his judgment, and even before, when the planner in him was sort of waiting for it to come, a beating wasn’t all he envisioned. What he saw, Phury couldn’t deliver and if he did, V would not react to him like he would to Butch.

There it was. All he ever thought he wanted, offered and laid bare, a sacrilege more than a sacrifice, on his waiting sex table.

And he saw it, all, in 4k detail, even before they entered the penthouse.

 

_Butch taking dominion over his holes, filling him, restricting and controlling his breath, his pleasure, his erect cock. First come the debilitating punches. More to release the tension and warm the muscles, but it feels good, to be shaken so bad the tectonics of the mind rearrange themselves, slowly falling into the old places. Then come the cuffs. Ankle to wrist, left side free, a worn off scenario that nevertheless will make him harden and twitch._

_“Do you want to play a game? Seemed to me you do, from what you let those lesser do to you.”_

_And the cop takes a gag ball, places it leveled with his crotch and when he pushes it into V’s mouth, hard, slow penetrating moves, and he inhales, deep, opening up more and dripping already._

_His bare left foot is pinned on the spot with carefully placed daggers. Move and bleed. So he moves and Butch looks at him with that strange look, like he can understand, but he’s powerless, there’s a road V takes that the cop can’t follow._

_“Hold this.”_

_And a revolver shines steely enough to bring him back to the game. He can’t talk, can’t ask. The barrel is pointed at his head, then at his heart and makes contact lower, on his hard genitalia._

_“Old, scarred, but beautiful, because it’s mine,” Butch says, looking there, and V can’t say if he meant the metal or his skin. Maybe both. He hopes that both._

_Then he watches as the cop meticulously and pointedly takes out a shell and places it inside, giving the barrel a roll to put some hazard into the equation. The understanding of what is to happen slams into his chest and he’s close to passing out, screaming around the gag ball, foot cut to pieces bleeding onto the black marble._

_“Keep still or I’m first.” The revolver is placed on the floor, the tinny click so inconsequential as if this piece of metal isn’t about to blow his brains out. The collar comes next and V wonders if Butch knows, if he sees it on his face, the meaning of placing a collar on a sub. He looks up, as to a god, owned, devoted and in complete surrender._

_That is, until the collar is attached to a chain hooked to the wall and he can’t move, yet again his freedom taken away._

_„You can’t step closer. You can’t move your hand to do anything I don’t tell you to do. You can’t, under any circumstance, touch me, unless I touch you.”_

_The rules are imposed with clarity, hard voice, as soft skin is revealed. The cop takes of his expensive shirt, his shoes, but nothing more._

_„And you can’t come,” he adds, as hazel eyes burn, with shame or determination, he doesn’t know._

_His nostrils flare at that, heat erupting under his skin, already sweat glazed and demanding a mating. If the cop notices it –and he’s not blind, deaf and dumb, so he does- he says nothing. Just picks up the last black dagger in his left hand, the revolver in his right, comes to the limit of close, hands it over. Keeps his fingers rigid, helps V lift the barrel to his head and drops his hand, but not his burning, scorching eyes._

_„Now shoot.”_

_He doesn’t even hesitate. One movement in the outside, a firestorm on the inside, more angry after the click with no boom. So Butch punches him, hard, bye bye jaw and then slashes the blade over his own chest and immediately in a perfect straight line on V’s, nipple to groin. The wave of emotions is almost too much. But he’s still here, much to present, much to tied to this male in front of him and this here, him, and all the emotions, questions, mistakes he stirs in V are not but half the torment. He needs more. More to be more._

_Butch has the revolver unclenched from his hand by the time his vision clears and with shaking breath already, he barely has the time to focus as his mind processes what is about to happen and he screams behind the gag ball, free hand trying in vain to reach the cop. Because the gun moves up and up. The NO is a raw muted howl that almost rips his lungs, tears pouring, salted, into the bleeding cuts. And the gun moves up and up._

_He knows time, after three hundred years and countless science books, he knows time. But this moment stretches to eternity, like on the brink of a black hole. He thrashes against the restraints, blood and spit and sweat dropping to the floor, following his soul._

_Butch waits, barrel in his mouth, lets the understanding set in, the inevitability of it all to blow over, and after a while, when all V’s muscles are torn, shoulder dislocated in the cuff and fingernails bleeding on the marble he tried to crawl on, small whimpers coming out of him in sync with everything else, Butch lowers the weapon, points it to the sealing and as soon as the bang registers, causing V’s eyes to go wide in terror, the cop shoves the hot barrel in the scarred skin of his groin. And that’s when he blacks out._

In reality, the session went different. Or did it? It left him empty and at peace with the rebel part of himself he saw as the enemy. The disfigured monster he blamed for his choices was rediscovered as the abused child unable to choose. And he embraced that part of him, in a much delayed gesture of tenderness, he cradled it and promised it that someday, it will heal.

Butch waits for him in his room that night. Another fantasy played on replay on one of his minds IMAX screens. But this time, he’s present enough to rewrite the ending, to a reality he can live with and more important, the cop can live with.

„You don’t want to do this,” he says in the folds on the cop’s clean shirt, happiness reshaping the edges of want and need and even love, as the other man tries to reach for his lips.

Those eyes focus on him, conflicted and he kisses them, in turn, until his tongue feels the bitter taste of tears.

“What if I do, V? What if I don’t know how, but I always-“

“Then sleep now, then go take a shower, live through the next day and find me tonight.”

“And if...”

He presses himself closer to that familiar body, and it’s not painful anymore, demands no longer firing up to the surface. It’s a sensation to be remembered when all in the world seems too harsh and repulsive.

“Then I’ll be whatever you need. As long as it will make you whole, and is part of me, you can have it, true?”

The kiss never comes, but that’s alright. He wasn’t really expecting it. Not anymore. Their circle closed with that night, a mirror of their first night, with him sleeping next to this insanely brave human, trusting him to be there and trusting himself to let go and rest.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There's a short epilogue after this, and I hope it won't ruin the story for you. For me, it made it feel complete.


	9. Epilogue

 Acceptance

When warm hands work their way inside his leathers, face to the wall, V feels in control. He smirks and turns the balance of power in a fraction of the time it took for the male behind him to position him like that.

Riding his hips, feeling him squirm underneath him, he pins the arms with his guns strap and takes the time to light up.

“I’m not enough of a distraction then?” the heated voice demands as hips push up, equally demanding.

“Mhm…” V lets through his lips with the smoke of that first inhale. His mistake is that he looks up, throat showing as he throws away the blunt and those tied arms hold him in a choke hold before he can react. Well, it’s all a game, he should at least pretend to be caught off guard. But the bite does surprise him and the growl from the now rigid body is clearly not part of the scenario, because the male let’s go and faces him.

“Off limits, is it?”

But Vishous doesn’t think the male is stupid, so he ignores the stupid question and instead peels the glove from his hand.

“Make me come before this turns you to ashes and I’ll reconsider your boundaries.”

The male licks his lips, fangs red and dripping, a foreshadowing for his lower parts, V suspects, but stays away, undressing too, after easily removing the ties from his wrists.

“Make _me_ come and I’ll reconsider taking orders from you.”

Game on. The wall cracks from the impact, some bones too, but the vampire can take it, wants it even and V has _some_ practice in this kind of power play and with nothing to stop him, he pushes and pulls and cuts and bites, a release with no shadow of guilt or reservations.

Assail takes it like he means it, not even a hint that he would prefer to top him, but V knows and wonders…

When they’re done, spent and getting dressed against opposite walls, the male asks the question he circles from the moment they decided, without a word, they’ll come back here together after the fight.

“You know I’ll ask next time.”

 And V laughs in a burst, fingers insisting on some blood on his lower lip.

“I don’t do …bottom,” and then, looking into the male’s eyes “Or seconds.”

But Assail comes closer, predatory, stupidly confident and a little suicidal and against his words, V is ready for a second encounter. Right now. And then the asshole has to speak.

“The way you play showed me your inclinations. Your boundaries tell me there is someone…else. But the way you fuck tells me you’re starving. You rehearsed this. And not with a female. Now, I don’t give a toss if you imagine I’m him, if you make me bleed or if you leave and never say another word. I’m…game, as they say. But don’t fucking lie to me.”

V snarls.

“Or to yourself,” he finishes and handles over the glove.

As the door opens, V stops and says, truthfully, he discovers, and with surprise.

“I wasn’t imagining him,” and the words feel a little bitter sweet, too real, too sensitive to be spoken so lightly, but true, as true as words can be when they compare reality to fantasies.  

Later, dematerializing to the Pit, he finishes the deconstruction of Assil’s last words as he was leaving and waits for the anger or the shame to take hold. Because Assail knows. The only one to stand his light and, possibly, him unleashed, is the cop. But neither feeling comes. Instead, there's this not completely pleasant undercurrent presence as of a dirty little secret. And as he punches in the code to the gate, he replays those words one last time, and then lets them go, to face whatever the night still holds for the son of the Bloodletter and the late Scribe Virgin.

  “ _Good. Because I was scared shitless of that hand and if even for a second you mistake me for him, I’m a goner. And I’m really only starting to make shit work for me and soberness is bitch enough.”_

Vishous laughs.

“What up, my man? What’s so funny. You torched Z’s family van? Tell me you did, that thing is hideous.”

And V grabs the cop’s neck for support as he doubles down in laughter.

“No cop, but that sounds like a great plan. Come on, let’s act like fuckin kids, true? We’re allowed, in this.”

Butch furrows his brows a little, the Thinking crease there and then gone and starts to share the mischievous smile V sports.

“Yeah, ‘cause they can’t live with us, but they can’t kill us.”

They leave the Pit palms on shoulders, together in all but one thing. But somehow, that loss is not crippling anymore for V. It’s not a fantasy, not a possibility, not a hope.

“It’s our animal magnetism,” V quips and the laughter booms again.

*

 In the other part of the city, Assail washes his shirt, a calming ritual of rinse, soap, repeat. And of all the things he could, or should or shouldn’t, but still go think about tonight, he finds himself asking, eyes lost on the blood stain, heart constricting uncomfortably, if brother Vishous, with all his truths, rehabilitation, addictions, fire and power, realizes he’s still holding out his blood for that male he’ll possibly never have.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It was, I admit, so very difficult to complete this. I over thought it, over felt it and over done it with the angst, so much so that I hope you’ll find at least one happy thing to take from this whole story and say it was worth it. In the end, it’s meant to be cathartic, for the character of Vishous and for all the readers that never got the desired HEA. It’s more of an analytical work, I see now, looking back, an undertake meant to push a character to move forward, forced in some ways, but well intended. Thank you for your comments, kudos and support, hope to see you in other fandoms and to read you all, crazy cool people.


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